Sunday, July 21, at 10:00 am: “The Best Medicine,” Rev. Kimberley Debus, Guest Worship Leader
Amidst the pains, sorrows, and struggles, we need the wisdom and healing that humor brings. We will explore the ways laughter helps us heal our spirits and bear the crudeness of reality – but more importantly, we are going to make space for joy and find the funny.
Special music offered by Katrina Landon and Liz Wiley.
Kimberley Debus, who is a community minister based in nearby Takoma Park, MD, inspiring an artful and art-filled faith. She consults with congregations and religious professionals throughout the denomination. She has previously served at the Church of the Larger Fellowship as well as congregations from Maine to Florida.
Sunday, July 28, at 10:00 am: “She Who Is:” The Feminine Divine in Western Culture, Barbette Spaeth, Guest Worship Leader
The divine in the West has been generally imaged as masculine, as in the Christian formulation of “God the Father.” This image has been tied to patriarchal notions of the male as superior in many ways to the female. However, the masculine divine has not always prevailed in western culture. Images such as the “Venus of Willendorf” seem to point to worship of a female divinity in prehistory, and the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean world worshipped a variety of complex goddesses. Moreover, although early Judaism and Christianity have been thought to focus on an exclusively male divinity, evidence from the Bible and other literary sources of this period point to the presence of the divine female, as Sophia, Divine Wisdom, or as the Holy Spirit. In recent times, worship of goddesses or of the singular Goddess has been practiced by neo-pagans and Wiccans. We will look at these various manifestations of the divine and consider the appeal and meaning of the divine female in western culture.
Special music offered by Jane Ferguson and Rachel Townsley.
Barbette Stanley Spaeth is Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at William & Mary, co-founder of the Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions, and current co-chair of the Greco-Roman Religions Section of the Society of Biblical Literature. Her research has focused on goddess cults in antiquity, witchcraft and magic in the ancient world, and the cults of Roman Corinth. She is the author of The Roman Goddess Ceres (University of Texas Press 1996) and editor of the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Mediterranean Religions (Cambridge University Press 2013), as well as numerous articles in professional journals of classical and biblical studies. She is currently working on two book projects: From Divine to Demonic: The Witch in the Classical World and Cult, Memory and Identity in Roman Corinth.